“Follow the River” Clipper Races, Japanese Boat Building, & Hudson River Poetry

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jack Loesch / Senior Museum Educator / [email protected]

KINGSTON, NY - The Hudson River Maritime Museum is pleased to announce three upcoming lectures held in-person at the museum's Wooden Boat School as a part of our "Follow the River" Lecture series. Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 7:00 PM / Friday April 18, 2025 at 7:00 PM / Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 7:00 PM.
​
Tickets are $10 for the general public and $5 for Hudson River Maritime Museum members. To register, visit www.hrmm.org/lecture-series.

On April 9th, Jacqueline Kavanugh will talk about the Round the World Clipper Race. On April 18th, Douglass Brooks will discuss the intricacies of Japanese Boat Building, and on April 23rd, Paul Kane will give a talk about poetry revolving around the Hudson River Valley.

Headshot of Jacqueline Kavanagh

Ireland-born-and-raised Jacqueline Kavanagh, 53, is an ocean racer. Once a stranger to sailing, she circumnavigated the globe as part of the Clipper 2019-20 Race, clocking up 40,000nm and adding big ocean crossings to her list of achievements. She now fronts the Clipper Race Recruitment Team where she encourages others to pursue their dreams and take on the adventure of a lifetime. She’s just an ordinary person who has been there, done it, and worn the foulies, making her the perfect sounding board for anyone wanting to take on the challenge.

Picture of Jacqueline Kavanagh and crew

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is a 40,000-nautical-mile, eleven-month adventure for non-professional sailors. Founded in 1996 by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, it pushes endurance, teamwork and skill while racing across the planet’s oceans. Crews, led by professional Skippers and Mates, battle storms, towering waves, and blistering heat on identical 70-foot yachts while navigating some of the world’s most demanding waters. Open to all experience levels, the Clipper Race offers a rare chance for non-professionals to experience the thrill and hardship of ocean racing across the planet’s toughest seas.

Headshot of Douglas Brooks

Douglas Brooks is a boatbuilder, writer, and researcher specializing in the construction of traditional wooden boats for museums and private clients. His boats have been displayed at museums across the United States and Japan. Since 1990, he has been researching traditional Japanese boatbuilding, focusing on the techniques and design secrets of the craft.
Brooks is the sole non-Japanese listed in a 2003 Nippon Foundation survey of craftsmen capable of building traditional Japanese boats. In 2014, Brooks received the Rare Craft Fellowship Award for his work from the American Craft Council. He is a 1982 graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, CT with a B.A. in Philosophy. While an undergraduate he attended the Williams College Mystic Seaport Program in American Maritime Studies. He is also a 2002 graduate of the Middlebury College Japanese Language School in Middlebury, Vermont. He lives with his wife Catherine in Vergennes, Vermont. To see pictures of his work and learn more about his research, please visit: www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com.

Photo of Japanese Skiff

Douglas Brooks is a boatbuilder who has been studying traditional Japanese boatbuilding for over twenty-five years. Since 1996 he has worked with nine boatbuilders from throughout Japan, and he is the sole apprentice for seven of his teachers. His teachers represent the last generation of craftspeople in Japan building wooden boats. Brooks’ research involves recording his teachers’ design secrets and techniques before they are lost. His latest book, Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, is the first comprehensive study of the craft.
In this lecture Brooks will discuss the crucial role of the apprentice system nurturing Japanese crafts and the threat posed by the absence of a new generation of apprentices. He will describe the roles and responsibility of the apprentice faced with the unorthodox teaching styles of his masters, who in some cases are forced to steal his master’s secrets. He will describe his efforts to document and preserve this craft through articles, books and workshops, and he will discuss the future for this craft in a country at the forefront of modernization and change. His talk is a lesson in craft, learning, and boatbuilding, and includes his photographs of traditional boats from throughout Japan.

Headshot of Paul Kane

Paul Kane has published, as author or editor, twenty books and many essays, reviews and poems in literary and scholarly periodicals. His work includes eight collections of poems and a collaboration with the photographer William Clift: A Hudson Landscape. He has taught at Yale University, Monash University (Australia), the University of Bologna (Italy), and Vassar College, where he was Professor of English and Environmental Studies. His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Bogliasco Foundation, and in 2022 he was awarded The Order of Australia.

The Hudson is a storied river, celebrated in both prose and poetry, as well as in myths and legends handed down over generations. This illustrated talk focuses on poems about the Hudson but also considers the notion that there is something poetic about the river itself, the way it fascinates with its beauty, variety and constant presence in the valleys it has formed over aeons. In our exploration, we journey through time as well as along the shores of the river, from the Adirondacks to the broad bay of New York, looking at work from early American poets up to contemporary ones, traveling in our minds and imaginations, as we too celebrate the poetry of the Hudson.